Zero tolerance: Virginia school strikes blow for gun safety by suspending five-year-old for using a pencil or something

posted at 5:21 pm on May 7, 2013 by Allahpundit

Via Legal Insurrection. Per the clip, in the school’s defense, the kid’s clearly firing a pencil machine gun. If he had taken Biden’s advice and stuck with a shotgun instead of an assault pencil, he wouldn’t have to worry about people taking away his writing implements. His punishment: Two days’ suspension, plus a mandatory appearance as a child prop in the next Obama gun-control video. (Kidding, kidding.)

It starts in kindergarten with pencil guns, then in grade school they move up to water pistols, and before you know it they’re all grown up and ready to join the Corps to defend America.

“When I asked him about it, he said, ‘Well I was being a Marine and the other guy was being a bad guy,'” said Paul Marshall, the boy’s father. “It’s as simple as that.”

Christopher’s father was a Marine for many years. He thinks school leaders overreacted.

“A pencil is a weapon when it is pointed at someone in a threatening way and gun noises are made,” said Bethanne Bradshaw, a spokesperson for Suffolk Public Schools…

“Some children would consider it threatening, who are scared about shootings in schools or shootings in the community,” said Bradshaw. “Kids don’t think about ‘Cowboys and Indians’ anymore, they think about drive-by shootings and murders and everything they see on television news every day.”

My weapon of choice, for what it’s worth, is the Bic semi-automatic. One thing about this: Didn’t the principal know that the school would end up being ridiculed online? Given the attention to insane overreactions to pretend gunplay by six-year-olds, you would think administrators would pause before slapping a kid with a suspension for turning his donut into a Glock or whatever.